powerfully
upon his now excited imagination, so that he stood aghast, unable to
grapple with its terrors. He hastily departed from the hall, leaving the
enemy in undisputed possession of the field.

What occurred subsequently we are not told, save that on the following
morning the widow's heriot was sent back, with an ungracious message
from the knight, showing his unwillingness to restore what terror only
had wrung from him.

The person who adventured this dangerous personification of the Evil One
was never known. Whether some bold and benevolent individual,
interposing on behalf of the fatherless and famishing little ones, or
some being of a less substantial nature,--whether one of those immortal
intelligences of a middle order between earth and heaven, who at that
time were supposed to take pleasure in tormenting the vicious and
unworthy,--is more than our limited capacities can disclose.

It is said that on Easter Monday following the Black Knight died; and
though probably it had no connection with the circumstances we have
related, yet was his decease a sufficiently strange event in the
mysterious chapter of coincidences to warrant this memorial.

FAIR ELLEN OF RADCLIFFE.

In Percy's Relics, this ballad is called "The Lady Isabella's Tragedy,"
and is thus introduced:--

"This ballad is given from an old black-letter copy in the Pepys
Collection, collated with another in the British Museum, H. 263,
folio. It is there entitled, 'The Lady Isabella's Tragedy, or the
Step-Mother's Cruelty; being a relation of a lamentable and cruel
murther, committed on the body of the Lady Isabella, the only
daughter to a noble Duke, etc. To the tune of "The Lady's Fall."'
To some copies are annexed eight more modern stanzas, entitled,
'The Duchess' and Cook's Lamentation.'"

Dr Whitaker says, "The remains of Radcliffe Tower prove it to have been
a manor-house of the first rank. It has been quadrangular; but two sides
only remain." A licence to kernel and embattle shows the date of its
erection, or rather rebuilding, to be in the fourth year of Henry IV.,
by James Radcliffe, who, we find by the pedigree, was the eldest son of
William Radcliffe. He married Joan, daughter to Sir John Tempest of
Bracewell, in the county of York.

"The noble old hall is forty-three feet two inches in length, and in one
part twenty-six feet, in another twenty-eight feet in width. The two
massy princi